Removing beaded finish

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Dec 4, 2000
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I am in the process of removing the bead blasted finish on a knife I have. And I made some discoveries that I'm not sure I'm happy with...

Upon sanding the beaded finish on my knife (500grit, silicone carbide paper), I found, to my dismay... many little gouges and scratches that seem to be left over from grinding. They hadn't been apparent when the beaded finish was there but now that the beaded finish has been removed, they are very stark.

What can I do?

I am going thru the silicon carbide paper like water in an effort to get a smooth satin finish... but I believe that the blade, being tempered, is very hard and making it hard for me to get a finish easily. And considering the gouges, I 'll be sanding till 2005 just to try to remove them... so I have decided to live with the scratches and gouges.

HOWEVER I would still like to achieve an even satin finish... can anyone offer some advice on how I can save a little elbow grease and get the job done faster?

WHAT I HAVE: I have several grits of silicon carbide paper from 240 tight up to 2000. I started with the 500 as I didn't want to use coarser paper and have a tough time removing the scratches.

WHAT I DON'T HAVE: any grinder/sander/sanding belt. I do however have a power dril... can anyone recommend any attachments that I could use fot it to make my job easier? It's a Bosch 550watt Power drill. Asking around at the local hardware store turned up no answers.
 
It's funny. Many months ago someone, I think it was Jerry Hossum, said that a bead blast finish required a better finish prior to beading, than a satin finish. I have found this to be true to get a good finish however many makers and many more companies use the bead finish to cover up sloppy work. It really doesn't work and if you look at two bead blasted knives, one with good prep and one without, you will see the difference.

I'm afraid you have no choice but to goto the coarse grades and more or less start from scratch. That's not a big job with a grinder and in fact I do about 30% of my grinding after heat treating. It is and will be a pain by hand though. You may want to start with a new, sharp fine tooth file. Be sure to clean both the file and the work often and chalk the file. Make a sanding block or jig. I think Robert made a dandy one if you search his posts. From there it's all elbow grease. That's why they call it work. Good luck and let me know how it comes out.
 
wow that was quick peter!!

anyway, like I said, I'm gonna live with the grind lines. given my inexperience, I'm afraid I'll screw it up some more and actually mess with the ground contours and alter the bevels on the swedge and the primary grind.

I'll just sand thru till I can get a decent satin finish and then pass off the vertical grinds as "character lines"... hehehe

odd tho... I'm not using a sanding block so just applying the silicon carbide paper by hand (fingertip to be exact)... but how come the bevel edges come off shiny and the sides seem to take forever to sand?

I have been damn tempted to grab some sort of sanding/buffing disk off the shelf and jury-rig it to my power tool and just blast away at the surface...

any other ideas?
 
Peter,

It might have been me that said that. 400 grit is the minimum for the Ceramic bead I use. It takes an effort to blast off permanent marker ink, much less scratches.
I've known guys that grind up to a 50 grit and use course glass or aluminum oxide. That stuff will hide anything.

QEW71, I agree with Peter. Course grit and a flat sanding block is about your only choice unless you can find someone to reblast it for you.
 
Qew71,

Just to let you know, I've been trying to take off the bead blast on a CRKT M16, the exact same way as yourself.

It's a bitch, isn't it? I also get the same shiny bevels/ridges but vertical grind lines underneath the bead blast. I suspect it's simply because those bevels ride higher, so it gets a concentration of the sandpaper.

I've been hand-polishing with 400-grit so far, and I agree, those vertical ridges just don't go down. Too bad I can't get a ceramic sharpener to ride along the hollow grind.... betcha that would take off those ridges mighty fast. ;)

Whew.

-Jon
 
If you guys are trying to sand hollow ground blades without a backing, you are in for a long haul, and disappointing results.
Same goes for flat ground.
On the hollow ground, you need to know the wheel diameter, of the grind, and make a hard backing with the same radius.
For a flat ground blade, any hard, non abrasive, flat piece would work. Micarta, a smooth file, etc.
Wrap the paper tightly and sand in one direction only. Use something like WD-40, or windex for a sanding lube. Wipe it off, and reapply as it gets nasty. That will occur frequently.
Good luck to the both of you.
 
I have no grinding wheels and such.. so it's lots of elbow grease... I don't really mind... but after the initial removal of the apparent top layer of beading... going is DAMN SLOW...

the surface of the blade is already smooth to the touch but there seem to be a gazillion lines/grooves/grain. I believe that the original stock wasn't ground smooth and therefor the texture is revealing itself in the sanding. Where the primary grind is, there isn't this texturing.

I have gone through 2 sheets of 500 grit silicon carbide paper with no apparent effect on this... DAMN... I'm gonna switch to coarser paper soon... will drop by the hardware store next week to get some 200...

And the grind marks on the spine are worse! Again, the steel is smooth to the touch but the grind marks are an eyesore.

And as I have posted before, there also gouges in the steel that are perpendicular to the spine and I believe are from the grinder when grinding the swedge... These are gonna be impossible to remove given what I have so I'll just leave them be...

DAMN maybe I'll be able to get the satin finish done by the time my 8-month old son graduates from university. It'll make a nice present for him along with the filework I'm attempting. THAT is in another thread... *sigh* shoulda left well enough alone.

Overall I still like that knife a lot... it IS a damn nice knife... I just didn't like the beaded finish is all... I hesitate mentioning the maker in case it give people the impression that it's a bad knife... WHICH IT ISN'T... oh well...
 
Qew71, between this and your filework post I get the sense you're not completely happy with production knives...the standard precondition of all knifemakers. :D

I think it's time you just bowed to the inevitable, and started on your own! It's not as hard as you think, you've sure worked harder on someone else's work than doing your own would be.

Go for it! :cool:

Dave

PS - you don't need anything more in the way of tools than you already have, either.
 
Originally posted by ddavelarsen
Qew71, between this and your filework post I get the sense you're not completely happy with production knives...the standard precondition of all knifemakers. :D

I think it's time you just bowed to the inevitable, and started on your own! It's not as hard as you think, you've sure worked harder on someone else's work than doing your own would be.

Go for it! :cool:

Dave

PS - you don't need anything more in the way of tools than you already have, either.

gee, thanx for the words of encouragement Dave... it is something I've thought about... but I thought I'd 'learn some of the tricks of the trade' so to speak before I embark on my knife adventure. I have another knife that's missing a handle... this was given to me by an old friend. It's been quite badly abused and improperly sharpened so many times the primary grind has become a flat grind on both faces.

I'll be working to try to restore that as well... and learn some lessons from them in the process.

After that, I'll be picking up a kit from a Japanese brand to practice on... I've already seen it and the blade's a really sweet drop point hunter/utility design...

*sigh* I live in a apartment with my family so finding space is a big problem. And messing the apartment is a no-no with an 8-month old baby around... I improvise as best I can.

again thanx for the encouragement!

Just one more question though, is there a big difference between aluminum oxide cloth and silicon carbide paper? does one cut better than the other? should I try the AlOx cloth to get better/faster results? I must say that trying to polish out the grind lines is getting me so down that I'm tempted to just run the whole face on a Silicon Carbide sharpening stone... coarse side!!... I won't of course... but I've been tempted.
 
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